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The flight control systems of flying insects enable many kinds of sophisticated maneuvers, including avoidance of midair collisions. Visuomotor response to an approaching object, received as image expansion on insects’ retina, is a complex event in a dynamic environment where both animals and objects are moving. There are intensive free flight studies on the landing response in which insects receive...

The use of mobile robots is an effective method of validating sensory–motor models of animals in a real environment. The well-identified insect sensory–motor systems have been the major targets for modeling. Furthermore, mobile robots implemented with such insect models attract engineers who aim to avail advantages from organisms. However, directly comparing the robots with real insects is still difficult,...

Odor sensing system with high sensitivity and selectivity is expected to be realized by using biological mechanisms such as olfactory receptor. We have already developed a cell‐based odor sensing system which acquires odorant concentration as a fluorescent intensity change. In the measurement, however, an artifact is likely to happen due to lack of stable and reproducible methods for delivering odorants...

Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) causes neuromodulatory effects in the cerebral cortex, which are useful not only for therapy on intractable epilepsy but also for enhancement of higher brain functions such as cognition and memory. Recently, it has been reported that VNS may also affect auditory‐evoked neutral activities. However, it remains to be elucidated how and where VNS modulates neutral activities...

The neuronal pathways involved in the processing of sex pheromone information were investigated in the hawkmoth Agrius convolvuli (Lepidoptera: Sphingidae), which uses (E,E)-11,13-hexadecadienal (E11,E13-16:Ald) as the single sex pheromone component. We first clarified the anatomical organization of the antennal lobe of A. convolvuli. Subsequently, central neurons in the antennal lobe that responded...

Self-organized criticality (SoC), a spontaneous dynamic state established and maintained in networks of moderate complexity, is a universal characteristic of neural systems. Such systems produce cascades of spontaneous activity that are typically characterized by power-law distributions and rich, stable spatiotemporal patterns (i.e., neuronal avalanches). Since the dynamics of the critical state confer...

A small subset of neurons, called “leader neurons”, has been assumed as the sources of network bursts in dissociated neuronal cultures. In this paper, we proposed a network burst generation model that a network burst is considered as a sequential transition of spatial activity patterns lead by a “leader pattern”. We recorded spontaneous activities of cultured cortical networks with high‐density CMOS‐based...

The rat has long been considered an important model system for studying neural mechanisms of auditory perception and learning, and particularly mechanisms involving auditory thalamo-cortical processing. However, the functional topography of the auditory thalamus, or medial geniculate body (MGB) has not yet been fully characterized in the rat, and the anatomically-defined features of field-specific,...

Counterturning is a common movement pattern during orientation behavior in insects. Once male moths sense sex pheromones and then lose the input, they demonstrate zigzag movements, alternating between left and right turns, to increase the probability to contact with the pheromone plume. We summarize the anatomy and function of the neural circuit involved in pheromone orientation in the silkmoth. A...

Various kinds of analysis and mathematical models based on neuroscience are developing in the neural network study. In the research, experimental data and knowledge so far obtained are essential resources to deepen their consideration of neuronal systems and functions. In order to utilize the accumulation of expertise and research effectively, it is important to integrate various resources, such as...

Insects have a small number of constituent neurons in the brain. Eventually they display rather simple patterned movements; a so-called ‘instinctive behavior’. This behavior principally occurs without memory and learning. The diversity of behaviors observed in insects has been shaped by millions of years of biological evolution. The behavioral strategies employed by insects must be efficient and adaptive...

The control of body lice is an important issue for human health and welfare because lice act as vectors of disease such as typhus, relapsing fever, and trench fever. Body lice exhibit avoidance behavior to some essential oils, including clove essential oil. Therefore, odorants containing clove essential oil components may potentially be useful in the development of repellents to body lice. However,...

The olfactory system of living organisms can accurately discriminate numerous odors by recognizing the pattern of activation of several odorant receptors (ORs). Thus, development of an odorant sensor array based on multiple ORs presents the possibility of mimicking biological odor discrimination mechanisms. Recently, we developed novel odorant sensor elements with high sensitivity and selectivity...

Interaction between bottom-up and top-down information processing between the auditory cortex (AC) and thalamus (medial geniculate body; MGB) has been considered important for auditory perception. In this study, we developed an experimental system consisting of a surface microelectrode array and depth microelectrode array to comprehensively investigate the thalamo-cortical system. The combined use...

Synchrony in a neuronal network is not just a spontaneous event but rather a representation of inner information. In this point of view, the variety of synchrony patterns is considered to be related to inner capacity of the network. However, evaluating and comparing the variety of synchrony patterns, especially between different samples or different times, is difficult. In this paper, we proposed...

Simultaneous characterization of layer-specific activation in the cortex and topographically organized activation in the thalamus brings substantial benefits to advance the understanding of the sensory/motor functions. We designed a silicon-probe microelectrode array to simultaneously characterize the primary auditory cortex (A1) and thalamus (medial geniculate body; MGB), which are aligned in the...

Development of cell-based odorant sensor elements combined not only high degree of sensitivity and selectivity but also long-term stability is crucial for their practical applications. Here we report the development of a novel cell-based odorant sensor element that sensitively and selectively detects odorants and displays increased fluorescent intensities over a long period of time. Our odorant sensor...

Temporal coherence among neural populations may contribute importantly to signal encoding, specifically by providing an optimal tradeoff between encoding reliability and efficiency. Here, we considered the possibility that learning modulates the temporal coherence among neural populations in association with well-characterized map plasticity. We previously demonstrated that, in appetitive operant...

Our group has for years been studying odor approximation to express a variety of odors using a small number of odor components. The insect's olfaction is more appropriate for systematic survey than mammal's one because of its database's availability. Thus, we propose prediction method of Drosophila's ORN(Olfactory Receptor Neuron) response using structural parameters of an odorant molecule and SOM...

Perceptual integration and segregation of alternating tone sequences differing in frequency (ABA‐ABA‐...) depend on the frequency differences (ΔFs) between the A and B tones and the intertone intervals (ITIs) between successive tones. In the auditory cortex, tonotopic separation, forward suppression, and multisecond habituation have been considered as possible neural mechanisms of this perceptual...

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